A Year's Time
by FactofFiction
Summary: "I was not sulking," She bumped her hip against his as if trying to prove her lighthearted state, "I was just thinking." "Uh-oh. With you, that's way worse." Holiday-Themed Fluff. Post reunion.


There was something captivating about the DC skyline at night. The staged lighting. Towering monuments. All concealing the true life and beauty of the people who lived in the tourist designed streets on a daily basis.

Paris was the same way. Sterile on the surface and yet teeming with life just below. What a strange connection they seemed to have - a city once called home and another actively acting as such.

"There you are!" Tony's boastful voice appeared behind her so suddenly she almost jumped. Almost. "Everybodys been looking for you! Bossman wanted to put out a BOLO."

She felt him approach, felt the light brush of his body and the warmth of his arm as he settled into place beside her. His forearms braced against the concrete barrier, mimicking her hunched posture.

"By Bossman," he suddenly spoke again, recognizing she wasn't eager to jump in with her own conversation, "Of course I mean Vance. The Big Bossman. Real Bossman is still in character. Playing the high chair to a bunch of snotty toddlers."

"He is Santa Claus, Tony," She carefully accepted the flute of sparkling liquid he held out to her, holding it gingerly over the edge as she turned to lean back against the balcony wall, "You can't very well expect him to discriminate between our children and those of the rest of the agency. That would not be very jolly."

"And a ho-ho-ho, Gibbs sure can put on a show," He tilted his own glass in her direction for a toast before downing the expensive champagne, "I still can't believe you got him to put on that suit. Or even come to the party in the first place."

"It was a joint effort," She admitted while carefully balancing her full glass on the wall, "Delilah and I spent months working on him. But it was Jack's last-minute guilt trip that seemed to do the trick."

Tony scoffed, "The man's getting soft."

His hair, perfectly quaffed at the beginning of the night, was now sticking out in all directions. She imagined it was a result of the minimum 10 kid pile-on he experienced upon losing a game of high stakes hide-and-go-seek earlier in the evening (he had offered 10 bucks and a tootsie pop to the first munchkin to track him down. Tali, of course, had won. And orchestrated the following ambush). And while she quite liked the way this disheveled state caught the moonlight at all angles, those motherly instincts she'd spent the last year rebuilding acted for her in reaching out to smooth the strands back into mild submission at the top of his head.

"The man is getting older, Ahava," Fingers slipped out of his hair and down to stroke his jaw as she spoke, "He has changed."

"Haven't we all," His whispered into her palm, having caught her wrist and moved to place a kiss to its base before moving up to kiss the mangled scar just above it.

Something inside of the doors came crashing down (for which they both silently prayed their six-year-old child had not been responsible) and caused them to practically jump apart. Funny how seven years off the job, now almost as many years as they were actually on the job together, and they still had this innate desire not to get caught. As if the very existence of the aforementioned child was not enough to give them away.

"What are you doing out here anyway?" Tony asked as he settled back into place with his arm pressed firmly against hers, now both looking out at the light beyond, "I thought we hopped on a 9-hour flight to attend the office Christmas party. Not sulk on the balcony while our friends have fun."

"I was not _sulking_," She bumped her hip against his as if trying to prove her lighthearted state, "I was just _thinking_."

"Uh-oh. With you, that's way worse."

His low chuckle was still like music to her ears, so she allowed herself to bask in it for a long moment before licking her lips and taking unnecessary interest in the towering Washington Monument miles in the distance.

"Hey," His hand was on her back now, pressing the soft cashmere of her crimson sweater against her skin, "Anything you wanna talk about?"

_Talking_. That was their thing now. Talking about their plans. Talking about their feelings. Always talking and whispering and sharing meaningful looks over the head of their daughter which promised even more talking later.

She could talk to him until she was blue in the face and still want to talk some more.

"I was just thinking about…" A breeze in the uncharacteristically warm DC night caused her to shiver and step just a bit closer, allowing his hand to now loop around her waist to ward off the chill, "Where I was on this night one year ago."

And there it was. The single elephant that still followed them from room to room. The one thing they didn't talk about amongst the sea of things they did. Where she had been a year ago. And the year before that. And before that.

"Oh."

His palm flattened against her hip and pulled her just slightly closer. She could feel his heartbeat hammering against her shoulder and suspected he felt hers as well. A reminder that she was there. Not dead. Not on the run. But there. Standing on the balcony of the rented ballroom. With him.

She had to swallow back a generous wave of emotion at his protective response to her comment.

"One year ago I was… sleeping on a cot. In an abandoned building a few miles outside of the city. Waiting to hear back from Gibbs. Waiting for my opportunity to end it."

After her initial contact with the team in the fall, she had been instructed to go under. Disappear. Let them work on finding answers while she worked on finding herself again (something they all knew wasn't possible as long as she was separated from her family, but could still be attempted). It was months of solitude and introspection with only brief moments of reprieve when she'd been given occasional instructions for reconnaissance and above board spycraft.

In short, it had been hell.

Upon their reunion in early spring, she had all but repressed the memories of those particular months. But he knew about them. At least knew whatever version of the story had been discussed in the debriefing.

"I call the building abandoned, but that isn't entirely true. It was abandoned by legal standards, sure. But it had a thriving homeless population. The most colorful group of people I had ever seen."

Laughter poured out of the doorway and into the open air of the balcony, but neither of them so much as acknowledge the sound. They were consumed with each other, safely tucked away in their own world with no recognition of the real one continuing to exist beyond them.

She did, however, turn to face him, if only for a second, and find that he had been drawn to a loose curl that framed her face. Clearly defiant and refusing to remain straight like its peers. He twirled it around a finger and waited for her to continue.

"I, of course, kept to myself. I wasn't there to make friends. But the rest of them… they had formed their own _city_. Family units. Larger communities. An entire ecosystem of human interaction existing completely beneath the surface of society itself. But it wasn't seedy. Wasn't riddled with crime and chaos like many would want you to believe. It was peaceful. The people were happy. Their love for each other and their little slice of the universe was just… overwhelming. Especially come Christmas."

For such a run down and decrepit building tucked away in the warehouse district, it sure had looked beautiful for the holidays. Lights strung up all around (many of which had one-off bulbs of different colors and shapes, patched together from other strands of lights, all of which had been retrieved from various dumpsters across the area). Down on their luck as they were, these people refused to let their circumstances stifle their cheer. There was even a tree in the back, physically growing through the floorboards of the structure itself and certainly lacking any leaves given the time of year, that had been named the center of the celebration. Several lumps of newspaper wrapped _something _sat beneath the tree. Ready to be opened by unsuspecting neighbors come morning.

"They were all broken. Most at the absolute lowest points of their lives. And yet they sat around on the holiday eve. Singing songs. One of them even had a guitar, sans a string or two, to provide accompaniment. They smiled and laughed and told stories."

Tony had shifted behind her now, arms wrapped tightly around her waist and chin resting against her shoulder where he could comfortably bury his face in her hair.

"And I hated them for it."

_That _statement surprised him, and he lifted his head and craned his neck to try and get a better look at her expression.

"They were home. They were with family. Sure, it wasn't actually home and they weren't actually families but… it felt like family. To them at least."

Her fingers brushed down his arms until they found his, tangling their way into the spaces between and then letting them rest on her sides.

"But I didn't have mine. Not you. Not Tali. Not even Tim or Jimmy or Gibbs. I had no one.  
I was completely alone."

He ducked to place a kiss to her collarbone, though it mostly landed on a combination of her hair and her sweater. But the warmth of it seeped through and pooled in her heart.

"So I laid down, closing my eyes and covering my ears. I did not want to witness their joy. I wanted to experience yours. And hers. I imagined you watching that movie - you know, the one we watched every year?"

"_It's a Wonderful Life_?"

"Yes. That one," She smiled lazily as her entire body seemed to melt father into his embrace, "I never could pay attention through the whole thing. I always got distracted."

"By what?"

"By you. Sitting beside me. Staring so intently at the screen. Shoveling popcorn into your mouth without looking. Sometimes you'd even drop a few pieces that would roll onto my lap. And you'd just reach right on over, scooping them up and shoving them in like the rest. Never thinking twice about touching me. Never considering how I might react."

"I… didn't know I did that."

"I know you didn't. You were always too wrapped up in that movie. You make this face when you're really into the film. A sort of wide-eyed-wonder. I imagined you sitting on a couch somewhere. That look on your face. The same one mirrored on hers. Both staring at a screen. Both dead to the world outside of the story."

She had imagined much more of their festivities as well. Like shared mugs of hot chocolate. A tree with thousands of functioning lights and red balls littered throughout. Opening one of the seemingly endless stacks of presents before bed, just to curb the excitement a tiny bit.

She also imagined a fully lit menorah in the corner. The lone evidence of their co-cultural celebration. Well, the menorah and the small pile of 8 already opened and well-loved toys.

"I imagined you tucking her into bed. Reading her that book - uh - The Night Before Christmas. I imagined you kissing her head and pulling the covers up. Escaping into your room for the night, but not before retrieving the few gifts labeled 'Santa' from a closet and setting them beneath the tree."

His arms tightened, giving her an extra squeeze in light of another breeze coming off the river.

"Then I imagined you crawling into bed with me."

He chuckled. It felt _so_ warm and light against her cheek.

"Hm. Is this story about to take a turn, Miss David?"

Her responding laugh was almost too quiet, "No. I just imagined you laying there. And me beside you. That was the most I could bring myself to ask for at the time. Us simply laying there. Together."

She was turning around then. Well, more like he was turning her around, hands having slipped out of hers and come to rest on her arms, guiding her to face him and also pressing her gently against the concrete. He tucked loose hairs behind her shoulder after brushing away the stray tear she hadn't been entirely aware of before.

Then he just looked at her. Not entirely sad. But not entirely content either.

"A lot can change in a year, huh?"

She nodded, "Everything, really."

"Yeah," He was whispering then, still fingering an out of place curl behind her back, "Everything."

And maybe it was something about the wistful expression he adopted, or maybe it was the way the moonlight reflected off the shininess of his eyes, but either way she found herself reaching for his face, flattening hesitant palms against either cheek in a way that brought back memories of another year, another time when everything changed. At least everything between them.

"I love you, Tony."

Thankfully, while the threat of unshed tears was also a recall to that olive grove where they stood in eerily similar positions all that time ago, the emotion behind them was entirely different. Entirely new. A level of deep gratitude and love that neither of them even had the capacity for the first time around. But now, it was all they knew to feel for each other.

"I love you too, Ziva. This year's been hard, but it's still been the best of my entire life."

Seeing the opportunity for levity, she raised her eyebrows and cocked a familiar smirk, "The best of your life, huh?"

He, too, found a familiar smirk, "Well… maybe not the best. That might be a little high. But definitely, like, top five."

"Ah," She rolled onto her toes to press a quick, chaste kiss to his lips before running her hands down the front of his expensive shirt, absently wondering where his jacket had gotten to. She could really use it right now, "Well, top five is pretty good. But I think I know a way to make this coming year even better."

Something entirely too dark and dangerous for their current location sparkled in his eyes as he rested his forehead against hers, "Oh yeah? How much better?"

"Hm," She pretended to consider for a moment, "Like, top three. For sure."

Hands slipped off her waist and started dipping low on her back, low on her hips, just low in general, "I like the sound of that. And what, might I ask, do you have in mind, Sweetcheeks."

She opened her mouth to respond until-

"Ima! Aba! I found you!"

Tali, in all her bouncy-curl and pink-satin-dress glory, came bounding onto the balcony and directly into her mother's waiting arms (after Tony practically jumped an entire foot away from the woman in response to the scare).

"You found us. We just stepped out for a moment to talk," Ziva explained before pressing a kiss to her tiny cheek.

The girl nodded, finding nothing strange about her parents, always joined at the hip as they were, taking a moment for themselves in the midst of the party chaos. She looked over at Tony from her perch on Ziva's hip and shoved a lumpy mass of _something_ in his face.

"Look what Gram-pa Gibbs gave me!"

He took it wearily and examined the stuffed elephant with careful fingers.

"What a cute _pil_, Motek. Did you tell him 'thank you'?"

She nodded again, more excited this time, "_Ken_, Ima! I told him '_Toda_', '_Merci'_, and '_Grazie_'!"

"Very good, Tali." Ziva smiled at her daughter, ever the proud mama when it came to the million and one language the little girl insisted on learning.

"That's great, Tali-wag. But don't you mean: look what _Santa_ gave you?"

His girls exchanged a weighted look before peering over at him with identical expressions of exasperation.

"Its not _Santa_, Aba. It's Gram-pa Gibbs in a santa suit!"

"Yes, Tony. You should really be more observant."

Ziva cracked a smile and he made a mental note to get back at her for it later.

"The _real _Santa is out delivering presents. He doesn't have time to come to N-C-I-S for a party!"

She fumbled over the letters of her parent's old employer, reminding them of the great distance she felt to the bright orange room and the giant brick building where they used to spend every day. They liked that distance. They wanted to _keep_ that distance.

"Yeah. Of course. _My bad_." He handed back the stuffed toy and let his other fall to the small of Ziva's back once again.

Tali yawned, snuggling the elephant between her cheek and shoulder while finding her own resting place on that of her mom.

"You are getting tired. Would you like to go back to the house now?"

She shrugged, then snuggled a little farther into Ziva's chest. That seemed to answer the question for them.

"Alright, Yakiri. Why don't you go inside and say bye to Tori, Johnny, and Morgan, okay? Aba and I will be there in a minute and we can go."

"Okay," She snaked her arms around Ziva's neck for a quick hug before being set down. Then she ran back through the double doors, ever the social butterfly when it came to the other children in their extended family.

They watched her disappear, waiting for a full second before reaching for each other once again, seeking to resume their position from before plus a less gentle, less chaste kiss. They indulged themselves, anticipating a long car ride, an even longer bedtime process, and certainly a safety window before they could be sure they were in the clear to resume _these such_ activities in the privacy of their shared guest bedroom. They had just enough time to get a little something to hold them over…

Tony, ever the _eager beaver_ as she teasingly called him, grabbed onto her hips and moved to press her up against the balcony's edge, causing her elbow to sweep across the abandoned glass of champagne and send it crashing to the ground at their feet.

They pulled back reluctantly.

"Nice one, DiNozzo," She muttered, more amusement in her tone than annoyance, as she ducked down to carefully pick up the larger pieces of broken glass.

"Me? You hit it!" He knelt down beside her, surprised to find such a large puddle of liquid beneath the wreckage.

"Yes, because you made me!" She pushed at his shoulder lightly.

They gathered up the bulk of the mess, paused to look at each other, then both stood to dump the broken glass into a nearby plant (no body, no crime, right?).

Tony looked back over at the wet spot on the ground, "Let's hope nobody comes out here to find the stain. Which wouldn't be a problem if you had actually drank the glass of champagne I so kindly brought you."

His tone was also amused instead of annoyed, but it sparked an emotion on her face that he wouldn't quite label as joking in kind.

"I can't drink."

He sorta scoffed, "One drink won't kill you, Zi. We're taking a cab back to Gibbs' place anyway."

She licked her lips, looking up at him in the low light of the nearby window.

"That is not why I can't drink."

His brow furrowed, part confusion and part intrigue at the lilting tone of her voice. Can't drink? If not to drive, why wouldn't she be able to-

_Oh._

"No way," His eyes dropped to her stomach, still flat beneath her sweater (he would know. He's had his hands on her all night), "You mean you're…"

"It really is amazing, when you think about it," She drew his eye back up to hers by stepping into his personal space once again, "For the two of us - romantically challenged as we are - to sleep around for _years _without incident, but come together and go two for two with unplanned pregnancies."

"Amazing," He agreed, hands finding her hips and pulling her in for another kiss. Adding to the dozen they'd shared that night. The hundreds over the past year. The thousands in all of the years to come.

"You're excited?" She whispered against his lips.

"Beyond excited. Ecstatic," His hands cradled her head, holding her in place and refusing to let her move until he milked this moment for all it was worth. She hadn't been the only one to imagine their first Christmas as a family. And dammit, this was far exceeding _anything_ he could have come up with before.

A lot could change in a year. And he couldn't wait to see where this next one led them.

One thing was for sure: it was definitely going to make his top three.

* * *

**Don't ask. I basically got the idea for this in the shower (where all great ideas are born) and sorta blacked out for a while. When I came to, this was sitting on my desktop. And I really wanted to get this up before 17.02 premiered so that nothing we learn from that could sway this little piece of fluff. Because we could all use a little happy and healthy Tiva at the moment, no matter what we learn from the coming episodes. **

**Also: I know office Christmas parties don't happen on Christmas Eve. But this is my fictional world and I can do whatever I want. Deal with it. **

**Please leave reviews! **

**I know I posted two fics very close to each other, but I can't promise I'll post any more for a while. It's just these little one-shots pop into my head and I literally cannot function until I get them out and posted because I want someone to share in my fluffy pain (that doesn't make sense but y'all get it). But I really need to get refocused on school. **

**So please enjoy this little slice of tiva heaven and stay tuned in case I happen to come up with any more. **


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